Thursday, July 23, 2009

Ruling Divides Area in Sudan, Why Al Jazeera Not Allowed in India, Whirling Dervishes on the Road

An international court redefined the borders of a disputed oil-rich region between north and south Sudan on Wednesday, seeking to defuse one of the thorniest issues in the 2005 peace agreement that ended Africa’s longest running civil war by splitting the contested zone between the two sides. In its ruling, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague overruled an earlier decision by an international commission that Sudan’s government rejected four years ago. The new ruling included important concessions for both sides, giving the government in the north control of the region’s richest oil fields, but consolidating control of the remaining region under the Ngok Dinka, an ethnic group loyal to southern Sudan and likely to vote to join it in a coming referendum. Ruling Divides Area in Sudan

In India, part of the problem is the self-absorbed approach of news vendors, which naturally gives them the worldview of a frog in the well. This could partly explain the fact that among the hundreds of TV channels now available to Indian audiences, a serious news channel like Al Jazeera is missing. The absence of Al Jazeera works to the advantage of the Indian state and its friends in the media in two ways. It denies the audiences the opportunity of looking at the world in a different way to the one projected by, say, the BBC and the CNN. This helps keep the audiences in the dark about burning issues of the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa, all of which would link India to the dialectics of geopolitics in a way that the western world would not want us to see. Asking (inaudible) questions Jawed Naqvi

BTW, any one knows if any Pakistani news channels are allowed in India? ~~t

The agency buried its head in the sand, keeping the research to itself for years and ignoring the fact that soon nearly all Americans would own cellphones and that the phones are always getting smarter and more demanding, putting a multimedia empire at your fingertips while you’re piloting a potentially lethal piece of artillery. Americans are so addicted to techno-surfing that they’ve gotten hubristic about how many machines they can juggle simultaneously. Left, literally, to our own devices, we spiral out of control. States should outlaw drivers from talking on phones — except in an emergency — and using digital devices that cause you to drift and swerve; or at least mandate a $10,000 fine for getting in an accident while phoning or Twittering. Whirling Dervish Drivers - Maureen Dowd